gooze wrote:(...)
What are the most common tasks in a multiple desk setup?
and
How do we want the desk to behave in a multiple desk setup?

I think one of the most common tasks is: plotting on one desk, bringing on dimmers and channels and patching on the other
or moving lights on one, conventionals on the other
or touring desk and house desk
or main desk in control booth, remote desk onstage during setup and while making moving light corrections.
(...)
And what about logging in as different users? What about one operator bringing in a channel and the other storing a cue without that channel (independent htp) in one case or with that channel in the other? Is it desirable if the "main" operator can get rid of channels on one hand, e.g. by bringing a submaster down? (three subs for three slave desks?)
Should we go back to channel partitioning where it is determined which channels a logged-in user can control?

You see, there are many questions. Which direction are we going?

Anyones opinions on this one?

I have at least one suggestion that could be a blessing on the short term and that would be to make the input from external sources act as though they would come from an exclusive submaster. So at least they won't end up in your cues as you program at the same time. But please see this suggestion as a side step. Let's first clarify how we want the big picture to look.

I have used a multiple desk setup for the studio shoot of Top Gear in Australia. The primary console was in the main control area so that the LD could control lights as required. A duplicate console was running in the studio to refine the pointing of the moving lights and plot changes - where the operator could see the rig. Worked really well once I threw out the domestic quality Ethernet hub.

We also setup the DMX so that either console could take control in the event of one failing.

In THIS situation, I would like to see an "Active Tracking" mode, where there is the facility of Tracking control AND Remote Palette in the one setup.

I've been working with a LP Live and a LP VL on the same rig for over a year now, and I've encountered all 4 of gooze's "common tasks", sometimes in the same week! Here's what I've discovered so far:

1. The lack of multiple user access is one of the few annoyances I have with this console. So far we've gotten by with recording cues on the 2nd console with the outputs disabled, and using the RFU logged into the main for focus. It seems silly to me that I have to have one console dedicated to running a focus call.
2. 1 main with the 2nd logged in as a remote seems fine, but I noticed some lag issues when typing on the remote too quickly, so I ditched this option in favor of the next one...
3. My favorite so far has been using both consoles as a main, but using different netslots. This works well in our situation because we don't have any DMX run in the theatre, all data is over the network. Unfortunately this does not work well with movers. One console will have full control, while the other is limited to positive DMX values (ex: will pan from 0º to 90º, but not from 0º to -90º). This option forces you to unpatch the movers from one of the 2 consoles. The ability to work with multiple netslots has worked well for me (although I would like to see the moving light issue fixed) but this doesn't help anyone who's using DMX.
4. For touring consoles I usually just use a N21 node set to a different netslot than what my console is. We've been dark for a few months now, so when we get up and running again in a couple weeks I'll have to try the DMX input into the console.

We've also had some issues trying to work with a single show file on both consoles. Unless one console is logged into the other as a remote you end up having to do a lot of cleanup on the show file when jumping between consoles. It would be nice to be able to save some items like patch routing and hardware settings to the console itself.

Very often I have been in a situation where the board op is correcting moving lights and the rest of the crew is busy testing, patching, focusing conventionals. In this case the board op keeps losing it's selected fixture. It get's even worse if he's using the Highlight tool. In some situations I reverted to use the ELC focus hand with a dmx merger.

I know it suck. Best work around (not ideal) is to focus by Output. That does not conflict with the guy on movers working and recording.
Also, if a full Ethernet output (Shownet etc.), you can set up a route to work from BLIND parallel with a LIVE route. RFU will still write to whatever the main is in though. Would have to use a laptop remote to work from BLIND on stage.